Rufus S. Bratton

Rufus Sumter Bratton (5 September 1892-19 March 1958) was the Chief of Army G-2, Far Eastern Section, an intelligence branch of the US Army which worked to decode the Japanese "Purple" messages prior to World War II.

Biography
Rufus Sumter Bratton was born on 5 September 1892 in York, South Carolina. He graduated from West Point in 1914 and was posted to Oahu, Hawaii during World War I before returning to the US mainland in 1917. From 1922 to 1924, he learned Japanese as a student officer in Japan, and he became an assistant military attache in Tokyo. He attended the Imperial War College in Japan from 1931 to 1932, becoming the attache at the American embassy that year. In 1937, Bratton was sent to join military intelligence to monitor expansionist Japan's actions, and he worked with Lt. Cmdr. Alvin D. Kramer to crack the Japanese "Purple" code, serving as a translator. He discovered that the Imperial Japanese Navy was going to attack the US Navy on 7 December 1941, and he had the Navy send warnings to the Philippines and Panama, likely targets. However, poor communications between the mainland and Hawaii led to a telegram messenger being sent to deliver the warning; the note did not arrive until the Attack on Pearl Harbor had already begun, and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel did not receive the warning until after the attack was over. He remained with the intelligence division under George S. Patton's US Third Army for the rest of the war, and he died in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1958.